Commentary

Relations with China and questions of policy concerning national missile defense and North Korea have dominated U.S. foreign policy news in the first few months of the Bush Administration. Pundits qua amateur contemporary historians are already referring routinely to...

The matter of learning lessons from history has been a prodigious source of aphorism and free advice. George Santayana famously warned that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. Aldous Huxley quipped...

The Bush Administration’s urge to national missile defense has sparked yet another visitation of debate over the 1972 ABM Treaty. This is depressing news, for ABM Treaty debate reminds one of Brigadoon. Like the fabled village of a rancidly...

The aftermath of the November 7 U.S. presidential election has been a boon to prominent lawyers with strong partisan ties and a dream come true for law professors with a penchant for the outlandish hypothetical. Within the week and...

In August 1919, the British government decided that the armed services were to make their plans for the future on the assumption that there would be no major war or need for any expeditionary force for ten years. This...

Only ten days elapsed between the Yugoslav election and the collapse of the Milosevic dictatorship. After a decade of losing wars and a pillaged, wrecked economy, the people of Serbia appear to have overthrown post-communist Europe’s bloodiest ruler. Why...

In May 2000, Philippines president Joseph Estrada visited Beijing and signed five accords to ease tensions over disputed islands in the South China Sea. It is surely encouraging to see two countries that have sparred in recent years take...

It is no secret that signs of social, political, and economic progress in Africa have been rare indeed. What is less often discussed is the responsibility borne by African leaders for the misery of their own people. But powerful...

U.S. policymakers seem to have given up on Japan. Who can take a country seriously when its June 25 elections featured almost no debate on how to revitalize a stagnant economy? When the electorate returned to power one of...